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Work Hard & Be Kind

My productivity clock is weird. I can’t do anything of great magnitude in the morning. In the mornings I can’t write good essays, I find it hard to read and interpret big data-sets or new complex ideas and theories, I can’t really code websites, I find it hard to hold a proper conversation for at least an 1.5 hours after I’ve gotten up. So I leave my admin tasks to the morning and I usually distract myself on twitter. I’ll attempt my work, but will probably have to re-write it later.

By the afternoon, I feel my cogs working more smoothly. I can read those research papers and books with the understanding they need and deserve, I can begin to stare at the word document with that paper I’m writing. I can draw much better – and can debate things until the cows come home.

By 5-8pm I hit another fatigue lull, but if I nap on the train home or on my sofa in the living-room, I wake up raring to go.

From 9pm – 2:30am these are my golden hours of productivity. I write everything I need to do, I notice ideas and complex issues I missed in papers during the day, I draw more in that time than I have done all day. I complete works, I come up with my bestest ideas – I learn so much new stuff in this time — I learnt how to code websites and phone apps deep in the night. I’ve started many of my projects at this time.

But it’s annoying. I want to be that well productive in the day – and ALL day.

And I know I have so much to do. So how do I keep motivated as I do my PhD and all my other projects?

Over the winter holiday I read “Let My People Go Surfing” — Chouinard’s story is of his values and what led him to start Patagonia (the best outdoors store, ever). The principles that drive his company are really his own and he is a reluctant businessman. His big focus is on quality, durability and doing more with less. He is a committed environmentalist and believes businesses should be responsible for the damage they do to the Earth. Refreshing.

Quotes I liked:“Doing risk sport had taught me another important lesson: never exceed your limits. You push the envelope and you live for those moments when you’re right on the edge, but you don’t go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live within your means.”

&

“How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.”

Before 2012, I worked so hard and made so many sacrifices, that when I thought it was all nearly over – I regretted the missing the really important things in my life. These quotes encapsulates some of the foundational lessons I learnt – or certainly felt – when I got sick, and my normal life was really hard to maintain for months and months. It drove me into the ground.

But surviving something like that, made me feel like I deserved to spend every day on vacation. But you can’t. You have to re-join the real world, and re establish yourself in some sort of way.

Now I need to be able to have a balance during this PhD. I’m finding it a bit hard. Some weeks I work insanely hard. Some weeks, I feel the guilt for not having achieved much. Maybe that’s a natural balance? But I think I’d prefer it to be more work consistent.

So in changing habits, and in hoping to sculpt something from my mess, and learning from Let My People Go Surfing values. I’m not going to spend any money on clothes, & unnecessary things like blankets and lights (which I seem to have a thing for!) I will only buy essentials such as food, and art/study stuff and train tickets – for a whole 6 MONTHS. Starting from tomorrow. This will help enable me to declutter my day, my procastination of online shopping when bored, from walking to shops and looking at stuff i don’t need. I want to begin to re-evaluate what I have.

And I need to write more.

I’ve journaled frequently in the 10 years. I kept a streak doing it for 106 days in a row over last summer. Every single day I’d write, I’m glad I did. And yet, most days, I don’t.

And I almost never let anyone see my writing.

Multiple theorists emphasize the importance of failure. I know this, but I’m not practicing it.

In the past year, I labored over at least a dozen items I planned to post publicly. I published only 1 or 2 good ones.

I sat down with Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, and it drove the point home even more strongly:

Whatever work you fear most, it’s likely the most important for you to be doing.

I fear writing because I fear I have nothing to say. I fear letting you see my half-finished thoughts because I fear losing your respect and attention. Most of all, I fear wasting your time.

But I know it’ll sharpen my thinking; I know it will push me. I hope it will connect me with people who like to think about, talk about, or work on the things I’m interested in.

So I’ll do it.

I will, at least once every week or 2, post something (brief!) that’s unfinished, unready, and unworthy of your time.